Adjusted Reality

Two years ago, I was in my final days at SOE, having given my notice about a week prior, and I was tying up loose ends, handing stuff off, and furiously trying to get those who were taking care of my duties up to speed on the massive amount of duties that were being dumped upon them.  At home, most of our stuff was in boxes, we were packing up everything to move from San Diego to Texas.  My life was chaotic, uprooted, and I was terrified.  As I always am when there is big change afoot.  Noteworthy perhaps – I was around 240 lbs then, so besides the fear of unknown, there was also the discomfort of carrying around an extra emaciated supermodel 24/7.

8 years ago, well, yesterday, actually, we left our Reno basement apartment just before sunrise with our lives in a small u-haul Zliten was driving and our cars, heading out to San Diego to live beside the ocean, leave the fires behind, swim out past the breakers, watch the world die.  In other words, getting the hell out of dodge.  But dodge was where I had spent highschool and college.  Life was chaotic, I was uprooted, and terrified.  At that point, I hadn’t seen a scale in months, but I was at least 200, probably about 215 if I had to guess.  I wasn’t quite carrying the supermodel yet, but I was at least carrying an extra 5th grader.

Besides the fact that I seem to always relocate in June, the other recurring theme is fear of change, but doing it anyway.  Both moves have been pretty bold, desperate changes that have been fantastic for me.  Both changes were definitely after months of wanting, but not set-in-stone for more than a few weeks before I was gone.  Both moves also created a bunch of financial uncertainty.

Leaving Reno after college for *anywhere else* was the plan.  I was pushing for San Diego, but the backup plan was Colorado Springs.  The weekend after graduation, we drove down and looked for an apartment.  Our current 3 bedroom(ish – converted basement) rented for about 650 per month if I remember correctly.  We were in for a shock when we couldn’t find anything in a safe neighborhood near town for under 900.  Discouraged, we drove back to SD to continue packing.  We had to be out of the apartment on the 3rd of June no matter what, so it was either find a place or move back in with the ‘rents.

The next weekend we drove back, with a mission – either find something in the next few days, or the next weekend we would be off to Colorado.  After much more looking around, we found and secured a JUNIOR one bedroom (folks, this thing was a glorified studio with a full kitchen and a wall between the bedroom and the other room) for a price we were comfortable with, saw Moulin Rouge (which was our present for finding a place, and to this day still one of my favorite movies of all time), and then drove back to Reno and finished packing.  I don’t think we even had a goodbye party, we didn’t have time.  As sudden and terrifying as this sounds already, keep in mind that neither of us had jobs there.  I had a tiny savings account but had already started racking up some credit card bills since I hadn’t worked the last couple months of college so I could concentrate on my thesis.

I’ve talked a bit about my time in SD, but it was definitely the best of times, and the worst of times.  Everyone should live in a big, expensive city once in their lives.  Everyone should also live by the beach once in their lives.  I took care of this with one fell swoop!  I found out that to live in paradise, you have to work so much it’s hard to enjoy it.  Our first apartment was in one of the best neighborhoods – we were within walking to tons of local shops and restaurants and bars, and what is now a walk but then would have been a 5 dollar cab ride to the nice area of downtonwn SD – the Gaslamp district.  However, we rarely went out, because we couldn’t afford it.  After the newness of beach wore off, and also once we were on normal people hours and could only hit the sand when it was crowded with tourists, we started going less and less.  I think besides the times work took us for an outing, I can count the beach trips in the last 5 years of living there on my hands.  Sad, for someone who is a pisces and wanted to live by the water more than anything.

Then, we moved up near work to cut the commute down – but we left the fun and funky to live in suburbia chainland tech mecca mesa.  Due to raises and promotions we had much more money to play with here, so we lived on restaurant food, but it was stuff like Chilis and Applebees and Chi Chis.  There were 3 dive bars in the area that were HORRIBLE, so we didn’t go out much, but that was probably a good thing.  Then after 2 years we realized that we were a) fat b) never going to own a house and c) besides the awesome climate, could be living in a big apartment complex anywhere in the country and not have it cost 1500/mo for a 700 sq foot 2 bed 1 bath.

We considered Australia (the studio went under last year, so glad we didn’t go under down under, hehe), and were just about set up with jobs in Vancouver when they fell through.  Then, at the urging of a friend living there, we started looking in Austin, trying to overlook the fact that it was in Texas, and people can carry concealed weapons.  We decided it couldn’t hurt to visit, and I secured a handful of interviews and meetings to look for a position, and off we went on Mother’s Day weekend in 2007.

We fell in love with it.  I had more fun and social interaction with cool people and friends in that 5 days than I had almost the 5 months prior.  Not everyone wore a cowboy hat and carried a gun.  There were tons of cool places to eat and drink and swim and shop and hangout and it was all affordable!  We found our neighborhood and if I would have gotten a job offer, we would have put an offer on a house we found.  I have no regrets because I love our house to pieces, but this one was cheaper and had a pool (and…erm…needed lots more love, but that’s besides the point).

I was back to work for about a week and then on that fateful Thursday evening, I got a call from my current boss’s boss, asking if I wanted to job, for just slightly less than the outlandish raise I asked for.  Out of town interviews are so odd – basically, these people decided from seeing a list of what I had done and spending 45 minutes with me, that they wanted to pay to move me out there and have me work for them.  In 45 minutes with them, I had to make the decision that I was willing to uproot my life for a startup (well funded, but still) that couldn’t even tell me the name of the game they were making.  Zliten luckily landed a job the second week we were out there making gaga looney money as well, but at the time when I accepted, we had no idea how long it would take him.

But it all worked out lovely in the end.  This is not my most favoritiest JOB I’ve ever had, but the product is top notch.  It’s good talented people, it’s stable, there are some really awesome PARTS to it, and it doesn’t eat my life so I can do crazy things like train for a half marathon.  It sucks that we’re in a situation where my poor Zliten has been out of steady work for so long, but at least we live in a town where we can get by on what we’ve got.  We’ve got a great circle of friends, and pretty much any day of the week, Austin has some sort of event going on, more than anywhere else I’ve lived in my life.

I guess the moral here is – feel the fear and do it anyway.  You just might learn something.  Very few choices are true forks in the road – if a choice makes you unhappy, you can always go back.  Or make another one.  A good, hard life shake up is sometimes just what you need to get yourself right again.  The move to San Diego focused me into finding a career I love instead of becoming a professional waitress/student like I was leaning towards (because it was what I knew).  The move to Austin reminded me that being successful is not everything.  Having a social life is worth the effort, and so is being active, even though it’s not directly helping me achieve the goal of world domination, fame, and riches.

While I’m hoping we stay here for a while, I doubt Austin will be our final resting place.  I wonder where our next adventure will take us?  More importantly, I wonder what our next adventure will teach us?  Oh, I’m sure I’ll feel the same way – chaotic, uprooted, and frightened, but at least now that I have 2 under my belt, I probably won’t be as much so as before.  I get attached to spaces and places more than things, so leaving an apartment or an office is usually a pretty heartwrenching goodbye, but once I lock the door for the last time and say my adieu, my goldfish brain is already thinking, “What’s next?”.

I watched Pump Up The Volume recently, and something that’s always stuck with me was Happy Harry Hard-on’s words after the suicide.  If you’re so unhappy you’d consider ending it, why not do something else crazy that’s not so…final?  So if you’re feeling unhappy or unsatisfied with something in your life, why not go nuts?  Do something drastic, paint your canvas with bold strokes with wantan regard for the end result, because doing SOMETHING, even if it might not be the RIGHT something, is usually better than nothing.  Chances are, you’ll end up somewhere cool, even if it’s not perfect, and you’ll surely learn something from the experience!

This might even be a fairly coherent thought.  Do not be alarmed.  Randomness will abound soon.

I live by a lot of principles and methods in my life, but one is definitely trying to find the least I have to give up to get the most of what I want.  In other words, I like to find the most efficient way to do things.  Case in point, my commute is more than 5 but less than 10 minutes any way I drive it, depending on traffic.  I still always wonder which way takes the least time on average to get there.  Because 1 minute is totally gonna make or break my day, right?  Still, this is how my brain works…

It took me so long to want to start losing weight because I wasn’t so sure what I would have to give up to do it.  I knew I would have to eat less, which I was ok with in theory.  I knew I would have to get some physical activity, which I was ok with, in theory.  However, the unknowns were out there.  I was smoking half a pack to a pack a day.  I wasn’t ready to quit.  Could I still lose weight?  I was playing a LOT of video games.  Would I have to quit playing games to lose weight?  I was drinking less than I was in and just out of college, but you don’t exactly see getting jiggy with a bottle of whiskey and muscles together, generally (at least for those of us of the fairer sex – and why is that?  Why are dudes allowed to workout hard and then play hard, but when a chick with a rep for being healthy is out, they expect us to be daintily sipping a water with lemon and eating salad with no dressing?  Anyways…).  Would I have to quit drinking?

Eventually I decided damn the odds, I was going to start doing this, but I was going to not do anything that I wasn’t ready to do.  A lot of it has taken care of itself.  Sadly, or not so sadly, depending on your perspective, I just don’t play as many video games as I used to – at least the same kind of games that took full weekends out of my life.  I still drink, but I couldn’t even dream of polishing off a bottle of whiskey with just my Zliten in a few hours like we used to.  I still smoke, but sometimes the packs get stale before I finish them.

Beyond this, I have other unhealthy habits.  My diet is not clean, nor raw, nor vegetarian, nor … any label that doesn’t include a sweet treat at night and at least a few servings of red meat per week.  I love “plant my butt on the couch” days, even though I could be logging more calories burnt with random non-exercise activity.  But I’ve developed a lot of healthy habits along the way too.  Exercising is a non-issue, I love it now.  I gravitate towards healthy food choices and rarely overeat just because I can’t control myself, if I choose to indulge, then I choose to indulge, and it’s right back to normal after that.  For the most part, I gave up caffeine and when I do drink even a regular diet soda or more than 1 cup of decaf coffee, I feel it’s effects.  I drink maybe one diet soda a day (and it fills more of a “sweet treat” type role, not a “I’m thirsty” role).

However, I am always looking for the most bang for the buck.  I didn’t give up all the unhealthy foods I loved, I just started looking for alternatives and smaller portions of my favorite foods that filled the craving.  I love places where I can get a 1/4 lb or junior burger and fries (and ditch about half of em).  I don’t feel deprived, but it keeps me from become gigantor-Quix again.  My favorite “genre” of food, if you will, is the sandwich shop type of fare: sandwiches, soups, salads, and wraps.  Generally if you avoid the 1000 calorie salads and tuna sandwich landmines, these are good staples if you’re trying to both eat healthy and sanely (for me, that means not having to cook all my own meals).

I’ve also been able to really push myself fitness-wise without giving up the partying.  It’s looking like the half marathon experiment is going to be a success – I’m only 2 miles away and I was feeling good after 11 miles Sunday.  I can lift and climb and bike and I have some pretty killer muscles to show for it.  Still some tummy pudge, but if that won’t go away without me completely overhauling my life, it’s not going to go away yet.  I love it, because I feel like I’ve been able to drink my beer and have it too, if you know what I mean.  Getting up in the morning to run or heading to the gym for a weights session after work might be tedious, but it’s something I want to do and the rest of my life generally works around it.  It doesn’t feel like a sacrifice to me.

Saturday, however, was the first time in a while I felt I really sacrificed for it (at least at first).  I had my fun night on Friday, planned to take it easy Saturday, because I scheduled my long run Sunday morning.  There was nothing going on that weekend, so it wouldn’t be a problem.  Then, Zliten’s friend from college was playing a show downtown.  He went out for lunch, then for drinks, and then ended up downtown hanging out with his friend waiting for them to go on stage.  About 2 hours into the adventure, he asked if I wanted to come join them.

I went through a bit of a minor existential crisis there.  Of course I wanted to go out and have fun and be a “roadie” and get in free and get cheap drinks.  But – that meant no run.  I’m not stupid enough to try to do an 11 mile run hungover and tired.  I tried to convince myself that I could just get up really early and do it on a weekday, but come on – that’s getting up at the latest at 7am, and the idea of running that long that early and immediately having to go to work for 8 hours – no fun at all.  So I did the responsible thing and declined and stayed home.

It ended up working out for the best, the guy’s band was supposed to go on at 8… then 9… then midnight.  I had to go retrieve my Zliten around 8pm from a really sketchy house the band had gone to eat BBQ and apparently do some other unsavory things which he was not OK with.  However, it was the first time I felt like I had two choices that were mutually exclusive and they both sounded like things I really wanted to do.  I think the worst part was my partner in crime was already out doing one of them, and to chose the other, I couldn’t be there!

I know it sounds as if I was being extreme.  Why Quix, you say, why didn’t you just go out and not party, but just hang out?  It’s harder than it sounds.  It’s just like peanut butter in the house – I would LIKE to say I can be responsible with it, until I’m face down in the jar, wondering how I’m going to burn off these extra 4000 calories.  I was tired, it was a bunch of people I didn’t know, and the only way it was going to be any fun was after a few beers, or at least some coffee – which at a shitty little dive bar probably wouldn’t exist.  So instead of putting myself in an awkward situation, I stayed home, made some necklaces, caught up on So You Think You Can Dance, and relaxed.  And it really wasn’t that bad.

I had a great run the next day, had a wonderful BBQ lunch, and even later enjoyed a few margaritas on the patio at El Mercado as a treat.  I can question what fun hijinx I could have gotten up to if I would have said “screw it” and wandered downtown, but the 30s have given me some perspective.  It’s not the end of the world if I don’t attend EVERY party.  With friends in town this weekend and 3 invites to random fun things the next Saturday after that already, I don’t think I’m going have an issue having to skip a few fun things to be responsible and train.  There will be much more fun to be had on a day before I DO NOT have to run 11 miles, and the benefits totally outweigh the few costs.

Another day, another ramble.  Where will it go?  Who knows…

I’m feeling pretty cute today.  I have on a purple tank top (my love for purple shirts lately knows no bounds) that’s sorta long, a little past my hips.  Over it, I have a light, zip up black jacket that when zipped, only comes up to about my hips, so the tank top shows up underneath the jacket.  I’ve got my newest thrift store jeans on – size 7s (woo) which I always forget to wear because I think they’re going to be too small.  They’re a little out of style since they’re that medium washed color and everyone is all about the dark jeans lately, but they fit like a champ.  They are my new “hot ass” jeans – which, I’m sure you can infer, make my ass look smokin’.  Rounding out the outfit are some hoops from Target, a purple/grey/black beaded necklace I made myself, and a turquoise bracelet that was a birthday present from a friend.  Oh, and some Tommy Hilfiger black wedgie shoes (bout 4 inchers).

I love when an outfit comes together and I’m walking into work and see myself in the reflective door when I’m coming in from the parking lot and think to myself, “who is that babe walking behind me wearing the same outfit – ohhhh…wait that’s me….”.  The shoes give me the appearance of being tall (why oh why am I not 5’10”) and the combination of the jacket and tank make me look like I actually have a waist.  I don’t.  I haven’t taken measurements in a long time but I’d bet I’m 36 28 28 or something like that.  I am the epitome of an inverted triangle, and it takes a really good ensemble to hide that.  Today, I win!

I also love being thrifty.  The jacket and pants came from Savers, and cost about 5 bucks each.  The tank came from Academy and was 5 as well.  The shoes – well, those were 40 but that was a huge splurge and I’ve worn the crap out of them.  The ones I had on instead and changed out of (because I’ve worn them a few times this week already) cost 2 bucks.  Today sort of makes me want to clean out my closet and throw out everything that doesn’t make me feel this fabulous.

However, I am starting another clothing “experiment” next week.  Let me explain the set up of my closet.  My “shirt rack” has shirts arranged in two categories – hot weather (tees and tanks) and cold weather (long sleeves and sweaters).  Within each category, they are in color order, so each shirt has it’s place.  What I did last year at the beginning of each season was made a rule that I had to wear each shirt at least once before I could wear anything again.  This made me realize I totally overbought during the winter because I had shirts I wore only once.  This warm weather season, I’ve been lazy.  I’ve worn whatever I felt like, which makes me gravitate to the same 10 shirts or so.

Sunday, after all my laundry is put away in it’s place, I am going to count the number of shirts I have.  Each evening, I am going to have Zliten give me a random number, and whatever shirt that ends up being, I have to make an outfit around it.  I’ll make exceptions if I have to dress for an occasion (like I know I’m going to leave work and have to go out or whatnot).  Weekends will probably be just whatever I grab for whatever we are doing, like normal.  After a shirt is worn, it will be taken out of “play”, and cannot be worn again until I get through everything.  If I cannot make an outfit out of it (and it’s not for a good reason like I just wore the only two pairs of pants that go with it and it goes PERFECTLY with this skirt but my legs are like hairy monsters), it goes in the donate pile (which oddly enough, all ends up at my moms).

Why do I go through such lengths?  First of all, it’s kinda fun.  I went through so many years of dreading my closet, and so many days where I just wanted to give up and wear a mumu because nothing looked good.  Now, the fact that I can just rely on a random number generator and put together something cute – this is a little slice of bliss for me.  Second – I have a lot of shirts.  I’m going to say I could probably go about a month and a half without rewearing, and that’s just from my casual, non going out, warm weather shirts.  Oddly enough, I have way fewer pairs of pants – (about 12) and even fewer shorts (3).  Again, I have my favorites, but I definitely cycle through them regularly.  I have a large variety of skirts, but most of those are on the chopping block as well.  Most of them make me look frumpy now – which was ok before when I was hiding obesity, but now if they don’t make me feel fabulous, they gots to go.

Have I said that I love thrifting?  I know, I know, but it’s not just the money spent, it’s that I have very little attachement to these clothes.  I have my favorites, but if something doesn’t work, I have no problems giving away a 4 dollar shirt I had for a few months to make room for the next shopping trip, where I’ll come back with a lot more fun stuff to play with!

Okay, that’s enough – 900+ words on clothing?  Yikes.  Imma gonna take my smokin’ ass, big head, and overstuffed closet and try to get through the rest of the day and have a nice mellow weekend.  What’s in YOUR closet?  Do you play clothing games too or are you more like Zliten, who pretty much grabs for something with his eyes closed most days?  Do you feel fabulous today?  What’s your favorite outfit?  Any cool weekend plans?  Do tell, do tell.  And even if you don’t, have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you in June.  Which also happens to be my race month.  Eek, it’s almost upon us…*disappears to freak out*

Another “Stream of Conciousness” Post.  No guarantees whether it will be coherent or worthy, but up here it be goin’!

Sitting at work here, waiting to get the latest data for what I’m working on (which is about a short blog’s worth of time), I was thinking about work.  No, not my specific work to my employer’s dismay, but work and employment in general.

When I was little, I was exposed to a lot of cool things – so I never really had that_one_dream_job a lot of kids have growing up.  I loved my art classes, so I wanted to be an artist.  I loved gymnastics, so I wanted to be an elite gymnast and maybe a coach later.  I loved doing plays, so I wanted to be a famous actress.  I loved my dance classes, so I wanted to be a dancer.  I loved math and logic, so I wanted to be a math teacher.  I thought waitresses had awesome uniforms and thought it was awesome they could carry trays above their heads, so I wanted to be a waitress.  I loved to write, so I wanted to be a novelist.  I loved singing, so I wanted to be a rockstar.  So on, and so forth.

As I got older, some things fell off as dreams while others stayed.  When my body started falling apart and I quit doing gymnastics, I also started coaching kids.  That was the most demanding 20 bucks a week I have ever earned in my life, and I realized I wasn’t that into it.  I would always just want to be DOING and feel resentful that I was just coaching.  I waited tables through college and still to this day thank my lucky stars I have moved on.  Cool uniform and leet tray skills or not – working in a restaurant servicing picky customers and dealing with catty coworkers and asshole managers is not worth the short hours and potentially awesome tips (plus some days, the tips were very un-awesome).

My first year of college I tried exploring the actress, artist, and writer paths.  My major started as education (due to the myriad of awesome teachers I had in my school career, I wanted to follow in their footsteps), and I was looking for a minor.  The first art class I had turned me off completely on art at the college level.  My instructor – who was also the department head – had one rule in his class.  Everything had to be perfect.  One super glue line on the paper sculpture he had us make (required to be only using white paper and geometric shapes)?  Grade: B.  I did not want to deal with that schmuck for 4 years so art went out the window.  I took some creative writing classes and was always the star of the class (I know, what happened, right?) but the sheer amount of old literature classics I would have to dig through to minor made me cry – so there went my english minor.

Theatre however, was fantastic.  The first class was interesting, but the teacher let us know about auditions for the college theatre company.  On a lark, I auditioned, and I was in!  I caught the bug hard and did plays either on stage or worked backstage every single year.  I was able to fulfill a minor with mostly acting classes (and very little technical theatre which I was less interested in), so there I was.  Now, I just had to figure out my major.

I knocked out most of my basic classes the first year and took the first education class the second year.  It was so awful, and I found out what teachers made as starting salaries, and realized I didn’t have the passion for it I thought.  College professor – maybe.  So, the same semester, I took a psychology class and it fascinated me, so I changed my major.  After some great classes, I decided I wanted to stay in and get my PhD and do research (I loved the labwork).  Then, after a horrible process getting my honors thesis done, I decided I never wanted to go to school again and I’d take my chances with the job world after graduation.

My plan was to wait tables for a year then go back to grad school.  Getting a job as a waitress is harder than it looks when you have a degree – everyone thinks you’ll just leave when you get a real job.  The next part is history – got into the gaming industry (which I think I detailed before but if not, it’s a post for another time), and here I am.

I tried to pursue the admin part of the job (operations type things – being on call if something goes wrong at late hours and getting it fixed), I tried to pursue web design and art (those poor people that I kept sending my comics and resumes to when I worked at SOE…), and then finally fell in love with where I ended up – as main bannana on a little game where I could put my varied talents to use.  I was able to use my writing skills, to a lesser extent my art skills, my not-shy-to-get-up-in-public-and-make-an-ass-of-myself skills from theatre, and my logic skills trying to become one with schedule-fu and finding the most efficient and bang-for-the-buck way to do things.  It also piled a billion pounds on me and ate my life, but I can’t even hate it for that.

Now – I’m out of the limelight.   I am one of many on a team that has put out a pretty darn successful game, and instead of running the show – my boss’s boss is the one getting recognized (as he should be, it was his baby).  Some days, it gets me down.  It’s like being the only child that gets all the attention, and then your mom has triplets, and you’re all of a sudden chopped liver.  However, it’s made me realize something very important.  To be the best at something – to even attempt to be truly great at a young age – you must give your life to it.  You have to choose something.  If I would have picked gymnastics, I might have been in the olympics, or at least at a top college and then perhaps a world renoun coach/choreographer.  If I chose being top bannana, I would still be there, working 100 hour weeks, consumed by the game and appeasing it’s followers, up at night wondering how we could add subscibers and solve problems, pursuing raises and title bumps, and eventualy continuing what I was doing on a new game.

I still dream about some of those things, though.  I kinda feel like I had my time to pursue art and failed, but I still get the urge to paint every once in a while.  Beading necklaces sorta fills the artsy fartsy void.  I started this blog to coax out the writing – I still have aspirations about doing a novel some day, and I have never stopped writing (be it paper and pen, content for work, content for my website, or just livejournaling.  I have aspirations about auditioning for plays again – Austin has a great theatre scene and I’m actually pretty well connected through work and contacts I’ve made doing the voice over stuff.  I am really and truly someday going to get a keyboard, a mic, and some sound editing software and give being a rockstar a go, since I never did that.

However, this all takes time.  Right now, I get up around 8 am and I’m not done training/working/eating dinner until close to 830-9pm.  Then I have 2 hours to relax, and I get my stuff ready, go to bed, and do it again.  On the weekends, I have friends, fiance, and family that feel neglected during the week and want to hang out.  There’s laundry and groceries to get and meals to plan.  There is the ever-so-coveted bike ride adventures, ice skating, rock climbing, waterpark going, and other fun stuff.  In the background there is a to do list with stuff that rarely gets done.

So, at the heart of it, my life is so balanced, I don’t have time to excel at anything.  I work essentially middle management in a really fun industry for a successful game making a decent, living wage, but I leave work at work when my 40 hours are up.   I have great friends and family close to me who are always wanting to see me when I have time.  Plus, I make it a priority to keep myself healthy through workouts and food planning/preperation (though most of the cooking and cleaning is done by the fiance, I admit).  I am too busy being happy to be bothered being a rockstar right now.   And – I’m slowly becoming OK with that.